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STATE OF THE IJWION. 



SPEECH 

OP THE 

HON. CHARLES B. SEDGWICK, 

OF NEW YORK. 



DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OP REPRESENTATIVES, FEBRUARY 7, 1861. 

The House having under consideration the report from the Select Committee of 
Thirty-three — 

Mr. SEDGWICK said : 

Mr. Speaker : I approach the discussion of this subject with a profound impression 
of it9 importance, and my inability to do it justice. I shall waste none of the time of 
this House in any preliminary statements in regard to this question. Three months ago 
the people of this country were engaged in the discharge of a most important political 
duty — the election of their Chief Magistrate. The country was in a condition of profound 
peace. Three months have passed, and what now is our condition ? We find six States 
in actual rebellion against the Federal Government ; we find that no property of the 
United States within their borders is sacred; that they have seized upon our forts and 
arsenals ; that they have robbed the Treasury ; that they have seized public vessels ; 
and that we are menaced by the actual levy and support of standing armies. Even this 
Capitol, in which our deliberations are held, is threatened. Seven other States, with 
more or less of apparent sincerity, are threatening that the firing of a gun in support of 
the laws of the Union, shall be the signal of general hostilities against the Govern- 
ment. No State seems to know that it is the imperative duty of this Government and 
of its executive officers to protect and preserve the property which has thus been ruth- 
lessly seized. We see the men upon whom we are to rely for our defense and the protec- 
tion of our property, the officers of our Army and Navy, forgetful of the allegiance 
which they owe to the country, and of the solemn obligations of their oaths, abandon- 
ing their trusts, and accepting office under separate and hostile States, as if that were 
the merest discharge of high duty. So low has this Government fallen, that the little 
State of Florida, with less population than the Congressional district I represent, and 
far below it in all that constitutes strength and greatness, is flaunting her banner in the 
face of the United States; and we are gravely told that a truce upon her shores has 
been declared between the Government of the United States and the hostile armies as- 
Kembled there. 

But I shall not dwell upon this. I wish to point to one other noteworthy event: that 
for the first time in the history of this country it has become necessary that the Federal 
capital now should bristle with bayonets in order to secure the peaceful inauguration of a 
President chosen at a constitutional and lawful election of the people. I trust, sir, that 
that inauguration will take place ; that it will take place peacefully ; that, at all events, 
it shall happen at the time and place appointed by the Constitution and the laws. I 
trust, with that event, other characteristics of the Executive will be inaugurated. I 
mean vigor, I mean courage, I mean moderation, which, while it demands nothing 
but what is clearly right — submission to the laws — will be satisfied with nothing less, 
and will submit to nothing that is clearly wrong. I trust there will be brought into the 
executive mansion, with that model ation and manly courage, the persist ency which a). 



ways secures its ends. 1 trust, that the man who assumes the robes of office will feel 

that— r 

"The only real element of luck 

Is genuine, solid, old Teutonic pluck." 

If a little of these desirable qualities had existed in the executive mansion three 
months ago, if the President had had energy, foresight, and courage enough to send re- 
inforcements to a single fortress in our waters, this difficulty would not now be upon 
us. The golden opportunity has beeu lost, and we are now driven by slow steps, by 
painful processes, to regain "what, thai incousiderateness or cowardice has lost us. 

Mr. Speaker, I am not one of those who believe that all these dire events have sprung 
from trivial causes. I do not subscribe to the philosophy which teaches that events arc 
ever disproportionate to the causes that produce them. Let us inquire what is the evil 
which we are called to consider, and for which we are to provide a remedy. In the 
first place, there is no pretense whatever that there is any tyrannous or oppressive or 
unequal legislation by Congress which is threatening the destruction of any of these 
States, or any of their prominent interests. That would be tangible. That was the 
case which occurred in 1832, when the complaint was of the operation of a specific 
law, which law could be reached and modified by the action of the Federal Legislature. 
There is no pretense that there is any clause of the Constitution under which the rights 
or interests of these seceding States have been or can be assailed. Nobody claims this. 
I believe, sir, upon the subject of slavery, I am about as radical as most people who have 
ihe honor of a seat here, and yet I never heard the man who pretended that, under the 
Constitution of this country, the Federal Government could assail or touch, by legisla- 
tion, the rights of slaveholding States, or the security of their interests, in any single 
particular. "" But we are told that there are personal liberty bills, which are a standing 
menace to the South. I venture to say, that on the assemblage of Congress at this ses- 
sion, there were not ten men here who could put their finger upon the law of a single 
State which they could say was a violation of the Constitution. 

Why, sir, I know something about the law of the State of New York. It was passed 
ten years before this fugitive slave law was passed. It was passed because, as all of us 
who* are acquainted with the history of that State know, it was necessary for the pro- 
tection of the citizens of that State.! There are those who hear me, who know tha" an 
a.-tual instance occurred where a free man was twelve years under the lash and scourge 
of the slave-driver — a man as much entitled to his liberty as any man in my State ; and 
that these law$ were passed for the purpose of protecting our own citizens ; and so far 
as they refuse to allow our officers to be engaged in any attempt whatever to arrest fu- 
gitive slaves, they go upon the ground, and follow the decision of the Supreme Court of 
the United States in the case of Prigg vs. Pennsylvania. 

I will now show that this law of New York does not interfere with the execution ot 
the fugitive slave law. In the county in which I reside a deputy marshal of the United 
States was indicted under it, and brought to trial before a Republican judge for execut-^ 
ing the process of the United States, issued under the law of 1850, for the recovery of 
fugitive slaves. Un the trial 1* put in evidence the marshal's warrant, issued by the 
commissioner under that law. The whole subject was discussed in that court. He was 
prosecuted with zeal and energy ; but the Republican judge held that the marshal's war- 
rant under the fugitive slave law was full and ample protection and defense against any 
prosecution under the State laws. 

And so the fact was established by the decision of that court, that whenever the law 
of a State interferes with a constitutional law of Congress, upon any subject, however 
odious, it would not be sustained, but be pronounced unconstitutional and void. There 
is, then, no real difficulty in this matter. And permit me here to say, that the fugitive 
slave law requires no amendment at our hands. Nobody has asked it. Sir, I believe I 
have as low an appreciation of that law as a human being can have with limited facul- 
ties ; and yet I am willing to let it stand, as fit monument of the madness of the times 
in which it was passed. And when the future historian shall come back to our day to find 
the evidence of that barbarism from which to date the progress of laws for his time, he 
need go no further back than the fugitive slave law of 1850. 

But the real difficulty in regard to all this matter is, that there is no loyalty anywhere 
to the fugitive slave law, I care not where it is. The South must be satisfied with a con- 
dition which, from the nature of things and of man, cannot be changed. In the first place, 
there is a physical necessity of having a free State border. In the next place there is a 
natural disposition upon the part of slaves to run ; and although conscience stands at one 
elbow, and tells them not to run from kind, benevolent, patriarchal masters, yet the 
Fiend stands at the other elbow, and tells them, in the persuasive language used to hon- 
est Launcelot Gobbo, the servant of an olden Jew, " Budge ;" and the advice of the 
Fiend, in this irreverent age, will always prevail, notwithstanding the beneficent and 
Christian character of the institution from which he is advised to escape. 



3 

But there is another difficulty about this. There is a trouble which cannot be over- 
come in human nature. It is the instinctive desire of every human being who sees an- 
other fleeing from oppression to help him along in his course. , care not who is the 
niiiu — it may be the chairman of the committee — who desires . nore efficient fugitive 
slave law ; [• may be leaders of the Democratic conventions of northern States, who 
say the South shall have their constitutional rights, and who, just before an election, 
will preach very fairly upon the subject of the fugitive slave law, but who. if a captive 
comes to their hearth at night, or early morning, will forget the obligations of party, 
forget the binding obligations of the Constitution of the United States, and, without in- 
quiring too particularly into his history, tell the panting fugitive that nearer the north 
star is the safer place for a man of his color, and will help him with food, money, and 
scrip for his journey. 

Again, Mr. Speaker, there is the territorial question. I am not disposed to argue that 
at any length. The admission of New Mexico, as a $lave State now, would not settle 
the territorial question. Nothing short of incorporating the Breckinridge platform 
and the Dred Scott decision into the Constitution will satisfy the southern people. 
Why? Because New Mexico is a barren gift. It is not desired; it is not desirable. It 
is a cravingfor somcthiug beyond : the desire to establish the principle, which, I believe, 
very few men of sense in this House will consent to — that all after acquisitions of ter- 
ritory shall follow the constitutional right which they seek to establish for the present 
Territories. 

Now, sir, it is evident to my mind that all this convulsion and revolution has not 
grown out of the complaints here presented, and for which the committee of thirty- 
three have recommended remedies. These remedies, therefore, however sufficient and 
proper for the specific complaints, will leave the real difficulty wholly unadjusted ; and 
I am therefore opposed to them all. Some of them I might give my assent to — some of 
the declaratory resolutions of the committee. Tbey are very proper as a declaration of 
sentiment in a private caucus or in a town meeting; but they answer no appropriate 
end here. They may be repealed to-morrow. They give no security against what may 
happen hereafter. They are desired by nobody : asked for by nobody ; and will havr 
uo practical result. I therefore feel constrained to vote against every measure of com- 
promise which has been offered. 

Again : I think the day for compromises is past. They have proved hitherto mere 
delusions, sustained only so long as they did not stand in the way of any favorite policy 
of a majority. Take the most solemn of them all — the Missouri compromise of 1820 ; 
it Btood whife nobody was interested in procuring its repeal ; it stood until party inter- 
est demanded that it should be broken down ; and then, without regard to the sanctity 
of the compact — an old compact, under which benefits had been derived upon one side- 
it was remorsely stricken down. That act shocked the moral sense of the people. I 
said then, as I say now, that it removed the existing barrier between any feelings which 
we entertained in regard to the right of Territories south of that line to come into the 
Union as slave States. It opened the whole territorial question upon its merits. It en- 
abled us to say, if slavery was good south of that line, it was good north. of that lino ; 
and it enabled us also to say if it was a political, a moral, and a social evil north of an 
imaginary degree of latitude, it was equally a political, moral, and social evii south of 
that line. 

I say again, that not a single Representative of any southern State is able to give 
any assurance whatever that the adoption of any of the measures recommenced by the 
committee's report would either induce oue rebel State to return to its allegi mce or se- 
cure the loyalty of a single one which yet remains true to the Government. Who is to 
say that when we have debased ourselves by yielding to these compromises with slavery, 
that a single State upon the other side is to be bound by our action, or even influenced 
in any decisive degree, by what we shall do here ? Sir, it is a dangerous principle to 
amend or abolish laws under excitement, or from impluse, or from fear, and much more 
is it dangerous to alter our organic law — the Constitution. The proposed amendment 
of the Constitution is to pacify a mere imaginary fear for the future, and lull apprehen- 
sions of events which will never take place. It is not necessary, for no one claims thi- 
power which this amendment denies. 

But if I am mistaken in all this ; if it is impossible to say what may be the future 
complication of events, and how it may affect us ; if it i3 impossible to see that what 
looks like good now may not prove hurtful to-morrow ; if it should turn out in the fu- 
ture that some two or three of these States should desire emancipation, and should de- 
sire to be aided in their efforts by the General Government ; you perceive that this 
amendment ties their hands, stifles their voices, and prevents us from affording them 
the aid which they may unanimously desire, until the remotest State upon the Gulf is 
satisfied to allow them to inaugurate and carry out a system of emancipation. 



4 

For these reasons, I am opposed to any alteration of the Constitution. If this amend 
ment to the Constitution does give an additional guarantee to the institution of slavery ; 
if it does make the task of emancipating the slaves in any State harder and more diffi- 
cult ; if it protracts their bondage for one single day in any State of this Confederacy ; 
then I am opposed to it upon principle ; and I would rather my right arm should drop 
from its socket than to admit the principle that by constitutional amendment, or by leg- 
islative enactment, you can add one single hour of slavery to any human being or on any 
spot of the earth which God's sun visits. 

Again, sir : as to the New Mexican project, I say that it necessarily cheats one side or 
the other. I must use good, bold English in regard to this matter, or I shall not talk 
about it as I understand it. It is offered, if the committee mean anything, as a compro- 
mise, as a concession ; and although men may stand up in their places and say that they 
think New Mexico will be a free State, that thev think it will not come into the Union 
as a slave State, yet nobody can deny the fact that it is offered to the South as a conces- 
sion — a yielding to them of the Territories of New Mexico and Arizona. The people of 
the slave States will so understand it. If they can be deceived in regard to the pur- 
poses of the Republican party, spread out as they are in the sun, so that the wayfaring 
man, though a fool, need not err in regard to them ; if they can be made to believe that 
we are to assail their institutions by Federal legislation ; that tve are to attack them 
within the boundaries of the States — I ask if they are not compelled to believe, when 
you offer this to them as a measure of peace, that they are to have it as a slave State, for 
their property to go to, for them to establish their institutions in ; and yet you will go 
home to the North and say that, although we have yielded what they demanded on the 
subject of slavery in the Territories by allowing them to bring in a State already mark- 
ed for slavery by an inhuman code, such as few other States can show ; although we 
have done this, although we have consented that a State may come into the Confederacy 
without sufficient population, without the means of carrying on a State government at 
all, yet we did it for the purpose of deceiving the South, and letting them imagine that 
a tub was thrown to the whale, when, after all, we meant it as a gilded and barbed hook. 
I do not believe in such legislation as this. I do not believe it is honest. I do not be- 
lieve it is fair. I do not believe you can justify yourselves in the face of an honest con- 
stituency for offering a measure of this kind as a measure of peace. Why, you know 
that whenever this State comes here with a free constitution, and is admitted as a State, 
vou will be reproached for your perfidy : and you cannot stand up iu the face of out- 
raged southern constituencies and say, we did not intend to deceive you in this matter. 
It is impossible that any .honest man should do it. 

Again : I am opposed to this measure, because I do not desire to see a competition 
for New Mexico between the free and the slave powers of this Confederacy. I do not 
desire to see again repeated upon this continent the fraud and force and corruption of 
Kansas: the strife of emigration — armed, contentious, vindictive, and sectional. But 
it is said that it is only a small sacrifice — only two hundred and forty thousand square 
miles which this barbarous code of New Mexico covers — which enables a man only over 
that small area to scourge and stripe labor, and wring from it unrequited toil ; and it is 
very poor land at that. Why, sir, I care not if, instead of twenty-four, there was but h 
single slave upon that soil, I never would consent to the admission of that State until 
those barbarous laws were repealed. I never would consent to it under any supposed 
obligation under the organic act of 1850, or any compact anywhere. I say that New 
Mexico should come before this Congress, or whatever Congress she approaches, for ad- 
mission as other States come ; and when she comes, she shall be tried upon her merits. 
If she is found wanting in any of the particulars which were so pertinaciously required 
nf Kansas, she shall not have admission to this Union by my vote or my influence. And 
vet, we are entreated to yield this small Territory to slavery, and to settle this question 
upon that basis. Commerce approaches us, and takes us upon a very high hill, and 
shows us these broad and splendid fields of cotton, with their rivulets of silver, and the 
golden sunsets beyond, and asks us if we cannot give even this boon to satisfy the 
South. Commerce would say, "Cheat the South, if you will ; but get the bill passed, 
and the Union saved, and then start your emigration societies, and your means for 
makino" it, what you avow it is your design to make it here on this floor — a free ^tate." 
But I must pass from this topic. I am opposed to compromise, because I believe the 
complaints, as stated by the members of this committee to have been brought before 
them, are utterly groundless, and the proposed remedies puerile. It does not touch the 
matter in controversy. And here my learned friend from Massachusetts [Mr. Adams] 
will pardon me for saying that I have read with great interest his historical parallel to 
show that a strong and proud nation should not despise even trivial and groundless 
complaints. I do not so read the history of the Revolution of our fathers. I do not 



understand that they went to war upon trivial and groundless complaints. I do not 
understand that that great contest was a mere contest about a three-cent duty on tea, 
or a stamp upon paper, or a duty imposed upon window glass; but I do understand it 
to have been a contest for a great principle, going to the very foundation of organized 
civil society. I understand that the Parliament of Great Britain asserted the right, in 
all cases whatsoever, to tax, or, in other words, to legislate for the colonies, and this 
without any representation upon their part; and that they, imbued with the true prin- 
ciples of English liberty — the principle which established the right of revolution at 
home, which led them abroad to Holland, and again across the trackless waste of 
waters to this country — contended for the ever living principle of freedom, that taxa- 
tion should be accompanied in all cases by representation; that they contended for that 
pri/icijile, and that submission to laws among freemen implied a voice in their enact- 
ment. There is no lesson in history which teaches that compromise or concession to 
the groundless demands or complaints of equal States, not only fully represented, but 
with more than an equal representation, based not only on persons, but upon their 
property, and who have exercised throughout all our history to the present time a con- 
trolling influence upon our legislation, and upon the foreign and domestic policy of the 
Government, are to be dignified by a comparison with the complaints of an oppressed 
people who were denied all representation by those who sought to govern them. 

But we are told that the great Lord Chancellor of England, 
"Tho greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind." 
advised yielding something to discontentments. Now, I think, with all due deference 
to superior learning, that he never advised yielding to insolent demands from a discon- 
tented people, nor yet to change the British constitution and laws, to remove discontent- 
ments founded on no possible rightful complaints. I hardly think that, at this day, you 
will find a British statesman, of approved sense and wisdom, who would advise conces- 
sion, a change in the time-honored constitution, and a reconstruction in their laws, be- 
cause the clans of Scotland, asserting their ancient independence, should again rally on 
their mountains, and come down with arms, to demand guarantees for rights which 
nobody threatened, relief from laws by which nobody was oppressed, and security 
against events which it was perfectly impossible should ever happen. 

But, sir, I am profoundly impressed with the wisdom of the saying, that "the surest 
way to prevent sedition, (if the times do bear it,) is to take away the matter of it; for 
if there be fuel prepared, it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it 
on fire." Tell me whence comes the spark which has set this country in a blaze? What 
is the "matter of sedition'' in our day that should be removed "if the times do bear it?" 
What is there, beyond these trivial and groundless complaints, beyond these discon- 
tents that appear on the surface? What is there in this country, which is always a mag- 
azine, not only of prepared fuel, but of the dryest powder, which a single spark might 
explode, to the destruction of this whole Confederacy? What is it that, in the whole 
course of our history, has alone threatened the liberty, the Union, the prosperity of this 
country? What is it that in 1811 — nay, before that — and in 1820, in 1832, in 1850, in 
1860, has been perpetually threatening the liberties of this country? Does anybody 
wait for an answer ? Does anybody desire to know to what I point ? It is the institu- 
tion of slavery, inwrought into the very framework of our Government, covering with a 
black pall nearly one-half of this Confederacy, jealous of its rights, inflammable, unrea- 
sonable, easily excited, with cause or without. 

No, sir, we need fear no foreign war. We need fear no aggression from without. 
The armies of the world may invade us. Our fortifications may be in the hands of the 
traitors who have now wrenched them from the Federal Government ; they may be 
sunk in the sea, with our ships ; and yet, so long as the red school-house stands on our 
hills, we are invincible, unconquerable by any foreign force, or any foreign element of 
power that may be brought against us. But what is it that is eating into our vitals? 
What is it that is corruptingg the very life-blood of the Confederacy ? Need I answer 
again, it is that accursed institution of slavery, which in all time has been, and in all 
time to come will be, a perpetual weakness, a disgrace, a calamity. 

Now, sir, this is the disease with which we have to deal. It is not a case for the 
placebos of the committee of thirty-three, nor yet for the small pills of Hahnemann, nor 
for the bleeding and warm water of Dr. Sangrado. It is a case for surgery. I am not 
now to speak of slavery as I look on it, as an institution of barbarism. I am not to 
speak of it as my people regard it ; not to speak of it as all historians describe it, as all 
poets sing of it, as all moralists and philosophers teach about it, as all philanthropists 
look upon it ; I merely wish to speak of it as a political power in this Confederacy. It 
is a great power. Whenever any of its real or supposed interests are affected, it rallies 
around it the Representatives and Senators of fifteen States as one man. It scents dan- 



6 

ger in the tainted breeze. It is unwearied in its vigilance, unrelenting in its purpose. 
It has controlled the politics of this country for sixty years and more ; and now, when 
its political encroachments and unreasonable demands have rallied the North against it, 
and when the census, with unerring finger, points to the end of its political power and 
influence, it breaks out into rebellion and violence; it would usurp the Government by 
force, and override the expressed will of the people by terror and bloodshed. In sev- 
eral of the States it is a settled policy to make this institution perpetual. 

There is no diligent student of the history of the time but knows that when the Con- 
stitution was formed it was the intention of its framers tint that institution should, in 
a reasonable time, be abolished by the voluntary action of the people of the States. 
Six States performed their duty in regard to it by adopting schemes of gradual eman- 
cipation. And now, because it is profitable, because it is a source of political power, 
because it is a thing to which politicians may address their appeals in an inflamed and 
excited community, a change has come over the intention and spirit of the country, and 
this institution is to be made perpetual. It insists not only on tolerance, not only that 
we shall leave it within the limits of the States untouched, but it insists on universal 
assent to its rightfulness, and on constitutional recognition and protection. Grant this, 
and who does not know that its next step will be to demand the reopening of the slave 
trade ? And rightfully, because, if it is just in itself ; if you have a moral and political 
right to hold slaves, you have a right to a supply of that labor from any source open to 
your reach ; and the slave trade will be, as it has already been, justified on the rostrum 
and in the pulpit. It will be demanded as a just tribute to the progress of Christianity 
and the enlightened influence of the age, that laws — barbarous, obsolete, criminal 
laws — declaring this just commerce piracy, shall be repealed, and the slave traders shall 
again sit among the merchant princes as the honorable of the earth, and the blessing of 
Heaven will be pronounced each returning Sabbath on the sails of the pirate as on the 
sails of all others who go down to the sea in ships. 

Nay, a little further. As free opinions and their exponents, free speech and free 
press, are inconsistent with it, as it suppresses them at home by the cord or by fire, so 
it demands, through the committee of thirty-three, their suppression as being "with in- 
tent to subvert the institutions of another State." Very careful and slow in its ap- 
proaches, and now for the first time receiving legislative countenance, freedom of the 
press is to be put down. 

But I must pass along. The institution, as I have described it, has twenty Repre- 
sentatives on this floor, of its property — or should have if they had not basely fled from 
their trust and abandoned their seats here, to establish treason against the Government 
in their several States. It should have twenty Representatives upon this floor of its 
property ; and this inequality it will necessarily carry into any territory it may acquire 
and bring in as a slave State. You cannot admit New Mexico as a State without admit- 
ting her with this inequality. It has but six of the thirteen original States; all of the 
rest have, as I have said, in accordance with the sentiment existing at the formation of 
the Government, and the implied understanding upon which the Constitution was agreed 
to, emancipated their slaves. Yet it has increased its numbers to fifteen ; and it now 
demands the protection of the Government in the vast Territories, the forcible seizure 
and subjugation of which is now contemplated. 

If an adjustment is effected upon the basis of this committee's report, it will not stand 
a year against the threatened piracy, plunder, privateering, the renewal of the slave 
trade, and the seizure of adjacent States, which is contemplated. 

The policy and aims of slavery, its institutions and civilization, and the character of 
its people, are all at variance with the policy, aims, institutions, education, and character 
of the North. There i3 an irreconcilable difference in our interests, institutions, and 
pursuits; in our sentiments and feelings. No truth is more apparent than this: "that 
this Government cannot permanently remain half slave and half free." The idea of a 
temporary separation, and a permanent reconstruction, is visionary and foolish. When- 
ever the slave States of this Confederacy shall be acknowledged by this Government to 
be rightfully separated from their allegiance, that separation will be final and permanent. 
The North stands ready, while the} r are in the Union, to perform its constitutional obli- 
gations ; but let them once be acknowledged to be free from those constitutional obliga- 
tions, to be separated from their relations as States within a common Confederacy, and 
you cannot find a school district within the North that will ever consent to a reconstruc- 
tion of this Government upon any such basis of the representation of property as is now 
permitted in this House upon the part of the slaveholding States. Nay, you cannot fine 
any district which would consent to admit such a State at all, unless with a full provi 
sion for the speedy emancipation of its slaves. If gentlemen choose to try the experimen 
upon that basis, the quicker they go about it the better it will suit the Representative: 
of a great proportion of the inhabitants of the North. 



But, sir, I most hasten to a close. I am satisfied that the experiment of a perpetual 
Union between free and slave States, under a republican Government, i3 a failure. You 
may tinker it, you may patch it, you may doctor it, you may turn it over to a council of 
politicians, or a council of physicians, it will come back to the same position : that there 
is an irrevocable, irreconcilable difference between free and slave institutions - and if 
States that maintain both systems remain under the same Government, one or the other 
must yield. 

Now, how do I propose to settle this matter ? Because, I go not for concession or 
compromise. I go for a settlement that shall be final ; that shall leave each to pursue its 
own policy, without the interference or clashing of hostile interests. In the first place, I 
shall insist that, as a preliminary step, if it shall take generations to accomplish it, that 
the Constitution and laws must be restored to their integrity, and the rebel States to 
obedience. We will put our laws upon a footing where they-shall b'e executed. We will 
have the property that has been wrenched from us by rebellion and robbery. We will 
have the forts : we will have the arsenals ; we will have the hospitals ; we will have the 
mints, and the vessels, which treachery has betrayed to our enemies. We will have 
verything that belongs to us, and the old status fully restored ; and then we will have 
a settlement of this controversy. How ? I would consent that all the slave States, 
with contiguous territory which desire to make slavery perpetual, should go into a sepa- 
rate Confederacy, peaceably and quietly, with the full consent of all parties in the Gov- 
ernment ; they should assume their just share of the public liabilities ; they should have 
such public property as lies within their limits, not required by the necessities of our 
condition. If any of the slave States choose to remain, I would provide that the Federal 
Government should make full and fair compensation for their slaves, with the condition 
of gradual emancipation, and their colonization, if need be. If no slave State chose to 
remain. I would then amend the Constitution so that no slave State should ever be ad- 
mitted into the Union. I would then provide for the freedom of all the avenues of com- 
merce, and especially for the free and unobstructed navigation of the Mississippi river. 
The right of search should not be driven from the ocean to be re-established upon the 
banks of the Mississippi. I would retain 3tich fortresses and places of defense on the 
Gulf as would be necessary to secure our commerce against any threatened piracy or 
privateering by any power on earth. These two civilizations might then start peaceablv 
on their several careers of generous rivalry. And permit me to say that, if *he Union 
is destroyed, the world will soon comprehend the difference " between a compact nation 
of educated, free, and self-depeudent citizens and a community of indolent and insolent 
proprietors of land, living in hourly dread of a herd of slaves." 

I need not stop to speak of the glory of the northern empire, with its capital upon the 
great lakes, with a ship canal from the Mississippi to the ocean, with improved rivers, 
harbors and roads, with all the vast territories about her, ready to rush into close alli- 
ance with a nation which has shown that it dared to be just, and has freed itself from an 
institution which alone has excluded it from national sympathy. And I need not point 
to the other experiment. If the success of the cotton dynasty fulfills the expectations of 
the prophets and seers who have talked to us about it, it will be the first nation on the 
face of God's earth that has ever been established with its foundations broad and deep in 
inhumanity and injustice, which has prospered, and whose disgraceful and ignominious 
history has not been written from its commencement to its close. But the Representa- 
tives of the seceded States talk about withholding their cotton until they bring France 
and England on their knees as suppliants, praying for an alliance with them. Sir, the 
failure of an American supply of cotton is a contingency which has been long looked 
forward to in England, and carefully guarded against. Lord John Russell, in a letter 
to the Manchester Cotton Supply Association, has pointed to this precise event, and the 
remedies proposed. In view of that fact, China has recently been opened by British and 
French arms and negotiation. India also produces abundant cotton. Australia, with a 
much longer season, produces as good an article as you can grow on your sea islands. 
In Africa and Central America cotton is an indigenous plant. It grows without labor ; 
and they are capable of affording an inexhaustible supply of the article. 

In the North we shall try to get along with such a substitute as nature affords us. 
Flax of short fibre, mixed - with forty per cent, of cotton, can now be furnished to the 
cotton looms of New England at eight cents per pound ; and flax of long fibre, when in- 
vention born of necessity has succeeded in perfecting — as she soon will do — a few little 
machines already in the Patent Office, can be. furnished to the linen-spinner at a much 
less price per pound. And this article (flax) grows on every variety of soil, and in every 
climate, from Maine to Minnesota. The manufacturing world long ago determined not 
much longer to be subject to the caprices of a slaveholding oligarchy which they hated 
and despised, but whose cotton they had then found no substitute for. And if I could 



procure no other sufficient substitute, rather than submit to this tyrannous dictation 01 
king cotton, I would go back to the costume of our first parents in the garden of Eder, 
before the fall. 

An honorable gentleman from Virginia, [Mr. Gakxett,] to show us how slavery 
strengthened and ennobled a people, has referred us to historical examples. He say; 
that slavery prevailed in the mightiest and most cultivated empires of the Old World 
and was the source of their strength. I know that slavery existed both in Athens anc 
Rome. And the same history has taught us that the Athenians soon lost the hardy 
virtues of their early life, and became cruel, unjust, effeminate, and corrupt; that they 
drove Pericles into exile for his justice, and poisoned Socrates for his wisdom and virtue 
and became soon the prey of the spoiler, and the petty province of a stronger and more 
barbarous despotism. 

If I have read history aright, it was not the luxurious and effeminate Roman of th( 
later and slaveholding empire who bore the unconquered eagles over the burning sandf 
of Lybia and the frozen regions of the North, but the hardy, industrious, virtuous Romar 
of " the brave days of old ;" and the slaveholder has read Roman history to little profi: 
who has forgotten that a Thracian gladiator, at the head of sixty thousand slaves 
slaughtered the mightiest armies of Rome, driving back Consul after Consul in defea 
and disgrace, and threatened with his victorious arms the very gates of the seven-hillec 
city herself; that the cities of Italy were plundered and burned, and her broad fields 
left a sea of blackened desolation ; that, looking abroad from her hills, such a scene oi 
smoking ruins was beheld as the world will never see again until the hordes of Africa 
are driven, by intolerable cruelty, to take arms against their oppressors. Nor can gen- 
tlemen forget, who have studied the downfall of that Roman empire, that slavery and 
luxury, having corrupted and destroyed and eaten out the vitals of the empire, plunged 
her into the darkness of the middle ages ; and it is left for our day, while the blessings 
of slavery are being commended to us in the Congress of the United States, to witness 
the great apostle of modern liberty and equality (Garibaldi) re-establishing the unity 
of Italy, and reviving, with their divine spirit, the desolate fields of Rome. 

Sir, the sentiment of union is strong in this country; but ^ae sentiment of liberty 
thank God, is stronger. We desire union ; but we will have liberty; and we are deter 
mined, come union or disunion, to retain and re-emblazon the old emblems ; bring bacl 
the old courage ; revive the old virtues of public faith, honesty, and integrity. We wil 
preserve what we can of our glorious inheritance; and if we must look upon a dismem 
bered and broken Confederacy, still 

"we will press 

The goldea cluster of our brave old flag 
In closer union ; and, if numbering less. 
Brighter shall shine the stars which still remain." 



W. H Mooee, Printer, Penn. Avenue, corner of 11th street. 



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